Dear Readers,
Yesterday I videotaped the San Clemente (California) Common Council meeting, where activists were seeking support from the city for a resolution asking for the immediate closure and decommissioning of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, in light of all we've learned from the ongoing tragedy in Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The entire city of San Clemente lies within a few miles of San Onofre. It has few egresses. In a nuclear emergency, its people are toast and they know it. But the plant does generate a substantial amount of revenue for the city.
Several dozen people spoke, including myself. Nothing was accomplished, unless the city common council deciding to write a letter to our Senators and various officials in Washington, D.C., asking them to remove the spent nuclear fuel as soon as possible counts as accomplishing something in your book (it doesn't in mine).
Oh and, of course, they are going to ask the federal and state governments for hundreds of millions of dollars. Not to build up the tsunami wall at San Onofre, nor to reinforce the spent fuel areas, nor to add extra backup generators or batteries. No: To finish a planned secondary escape route!
They do not seem to understand that evacuation, even with a hundred escape routes, will probably be impossible -- as it was in Japan -- because it will be too late by the time you hear there's an accident already in progress. Duct tape the windows and doors, run HEPA filters if you have electricity, and pray the cloud passes over you and on to the next house. And every road will be jammed, even if they succeed in getting funding for an alternate route out of the area.
Many of the citizens who spoke were very good -- one even rode her bike some 75 miles just to get there. Only one person spoke in favor of the plant, a retired worker.
Unfortunately, cameras were only allowed where they could film the backs of people's heads. However, speaking for less than a minute, nine-year-old Ella, whom I had the pleasure of meeting the day before, brought the house down. Fortunately, she happened to be the only person who faced the audience, and I had a good camera angle on this precious little angel:
Ella was a welcome alternative to the photographs of deformed Chernobyl babies which the activists felt obliged to present. If we wish to avoid that fate, we MUST shut these (and all) nuclear reactors down forever!
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman Carlsbad, CA
The author has been blogging about nuclear issues for decades.
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Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
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Guns don't kill people. Stupidity kills people. Ambivalence kills people. Denial kills people. Being oblivious to their surroundings kills people. Most people are sheep. People with bad intentions are wolves. Wolves kill sheep – until the sheepdog comes. I am a sheepdog. I make people uncomfortable because I have teeth like a wolf. Sheep don't want to be reminded of wolves – they want to pretend wolves don't exist – until one appears... via
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Mahalos for being the Sheepdog Ace.